i8 74 ] CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PSALTER 303 



disposed to hear its lesson, even to those who may be 

 backsliding and averse to its teachings. Nor will it do 

 for him simply to dwell on such sides of religious truth 

 as find a special echo in the present circumstances of his 

 own spiritual life. For then his teaching would be quite 

 as much the teaching of his own imperfect, even abnormal^ 

 experiences as the teaching of the pure Word of God. 

 The only thing that he would really contribute to his 

 hearers over and above what each of them could read for 

 himself would be illustrations drawn from his own inner 

 life ; his preaching might be experimental, but it would 

 be morbidly, pathologically, experimental. If he were an 

 honest man it would be often impossible for him to enter 

 the pulpit at all ; and all idea of being able from week to 

 week to feed his flock with a word not his own but the 

 Word of God Himself must be given up. Now what is the 

 alternative for this false style of teaching ? Manifestly 

 to draw the experimental side of preaching from the normal 

 experience laid down in the Bible to let the Psalmists 

 speak for themselves. And surely they speak more 

 clearly, truly, powerfully than you can speak. If they 

 are not clear to us now, it is because we have not been 

 their companions in the experiences of which they sing 

 and what they say will become clear to us if we recognise 

 the outward circumstances in which they stood, the 

 character of the revelation that supported them, the 

 nature of the temptations by which they were encompassed, 

 the sins that they were fighting, and the like. And all 

 this is matter of strict scientific enquiry. No doubt it 

 needs spiritual insight too. But when we set to study the 

 Psalms in this way, with the head as well as with the 

 heart, we shall be immeasurably freer from the risk of 

 putting our own word in the place of God s, immeasurably 

 more likely to preach the Psalmist s experience instead 

 of our own. And, then, there is another thing. The 

 Psalmists were neither perfect men nor did they stand 

 under a perfect revelation. As the spiritual gifts they 



